Edge's latest feature helps show only the notification requests you want

Microsoft is working to balance how many notification requests you see while browsing the web.

What you need to know

• Microsoft is rolling out a new adaptive notification requests feature on Microsoft Edge.
• The feature studies how people respond to notification requests to decide which requests to show going forward.
• The adaptive notification requests feature is rolling out to Edge 88.

Microsoft is rolling out a new adaptive notification requests feature to its Edge browser. The feature utilizes people's feedback and aims to only show notification requests that people actually want to see. The feature has been in preview testing for some time and is now rolling out to Microsoft Edge 88 Stable, which is generally available. Microsoft outlines the feature in a recent blog post.

Notifications on the web can be a nuisance. Microsoft tested one method of making them less irritable, quiet notification requests, in Edge 84. This feature has notification requests appear as a bell icon in the address bar rather than popping up on a screen. While this has been shown to be successful in hiding the notification requests that people don't want to see, it also blocks requests that people do want to see.

While people might not like notification requests from all the sites they visit, they may want notifications for favorite news sites or checking their email. Microsoft's adaptive notification requests aim to balance things out.

Adaptive notification requests rely on a scoring system that's based on how people interact with requests from websites. If someone selects to block a notification, that earns a worse score than someone just ignoring the prompt. Microsoft uses data from people's interaction with notification prompts, and then the adaptive notification requests feature shows prompts for sites that people are more likely to want notifications from.

If you don't want to see any prompts, you can turn quiet notification requests back on through Edge's notification settings. If you manually block or dismiss notification requests three times in a row, Edge will automatically enable the quiet requests feature.

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